PITTSBURGH — A solution is in the works for a street in Pittsburgh’s Polish Hill neighborhood that’s been plagued by repeat water main breaks over the years. One of them happened during last month’s massive landslide that condemned a home.
PHOTOS: Water main break causes landslide in Polish Hill
Neighbors along Brereton Street and behind it said main breaks happen at least once a month leaving them without a drop of water.
“It’s definitely been stressful,” said Colleen Shuda, who lives on Stockholm Street.
>> Polish Hill homeowners on edge after road crumbles near homes; PWSA working to identify landslides
Last month, there were two breaks. On Oct. 11, water could be seen shooting several feet into the air causing chunks of the road and land to crumble dangerously close to homes.
“I don’t think this thing’s going to collapse now but if they don’t fix it like they didn’t before, I don’t know,” said Justin Hickey, who lives on Brereton Street several feet away from the site of the slide.
One home was condemned.
Thankfully, Pittsburgh Water officials said the hillside hasn’t shifted any farther, but the road is still blocked off.
Pittsburgh Water’s CEO Will Pickering said a solution is in the works to lessen the chance of more breaks on the street. The project involves moving the water service lines from Brereton Street to Kenney Way behind about seven homes where the water authority said the land is more stable.
“If it starts flooding up there, it’s going to be flooding in the back of everyone’s house instead of in front of it now,” Hickey said.
According to Pickering, experts don’t anticipate that happening.
“We did consult with a geotechnical expert to make sure that our methods and means weren’t going to disrupt anything further because the last thing we want to do is create any additional issues for those neighbors,” he said.
Pickering said they’d have to move the plumbing inside the home from the front to the back of the house adding that it typically takes about a day.
“That’s at no expense to customers,” he said. “It can usually get done in about a day and the outage does not have to span that entire day.”
Before they could start, they’ll need all the homeowners to agree to the work or water could be shut off. Pickering, however, doesn’t think they’ll have a problem with getting people on board.
“We’re going to work with them and their schedules to get this work done with little interruptions to their lives as possible,” Pickering said.
Pittsburgh Water has collected soil samples to figure out what might have led to the landslide. An analysis is currently being run at the lab and will take another six weeks for the report to come out. Then, they can develop a plan to fix the hillside.
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